House of Representatives, on Thursday ordered the probe of the
Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, under the leadership of its Comptroller
General, Hameed Ali.
This decision was taken following the adoption of a motion sponsored
by member from Abia, Prestige Ossy on the “Need to Investigate the
Failure of the Nigerian Customs Service to Auction Confiscated Goods”.
He said instead of auctioning the seized items worth billions of naira, the service left them to degrade.
The lawmaker said it was worrisome that since the ban took effect in
2015, “It had resulted to the proliferation of seized goods at various
formations of the Nigerian customs service”.
Ossy said “most of these goods, especially the vehicles with duty
paid value (DPV) worth over N6 billion, are rapidly depreciating.
“The customs service will eventually spend huge amount of money in
disposing them when it ought to have generated huge revenue for the
government by auctioning them before they wither away.
“The failure to auction goods in its custody had denied the federal
government over N1 trillion which ought to accrue to it from the
auctioning of those goods,’’ he said.
Following the adoption of the motion, the house passed it to its
committee on Customs and excise to investigate and report back in eight
weeks.